Shrovetide doughnuts have their special place among the shrovetide treats. The restaurant in Trojane, at the top of the pass connecting the Styria and the Carniola regions, has been a place where horse and cart drivers and travellers have always stopped for a snack. When Rajka Konjšek married into the inn, and brought with her the recipe for delicious doughnuts, these soon became the most popular dessert of Trojane, soon known throughout Slovenia, and doughnuts became the trade mark of the inn.

The largest number of doughnuts is sold during summer months, but they occupy the most of their time and are the most sought at the time of shrovetide carnival. The reinforced team of cooks keeps working night and day, from Fat Thursday to Ash Wednesday. During that period up to 100,000 doughnuts are made, 15,000 to 20,000 per day.

For that purpose enormous quantities of flour, eggs, sugar, and other ingredients are used, measured in tons, and counted in thousands. For frying doughnuts they use a 12 metres long deep fat fryer, thus assuring that all doughnuts have a neat yellow ring, as they are supposed to. In old times the skill of a housewife was judged by her ability to make doughnuts with neat golden yellow ring around the middle.

Once fried, doughnuts are injected with jam. Apricot jam is still most frequently used, but for a certain part of doughnuts strawberry jam, or vanilla filling are used. Some are covered in chocolate icing. But for shrovetide the Trojane restaurant abides by tradition – doughnuts with apricot jam. The recipe has not changed since the beginning, only the procedure has changed in time – although doughnuts are still made by skilled hands of a large number of cooks.

Others have already tried to copy Trojane doughnuts. Some even tried to sell them under the same name, but the original manufacturers in Trojane claim that the original Trojane doughnuts can be bought only in their restaurant.

Miro Štebe, TV Slovenija
Translated by G. K.